Rich people getting sponsored to do fun stuff

[SmuggleStudies]

Fucking hell, another extremely wealthy acquaintance has just done this. It makes no sense. You like running half marathons, so do it. If you want to donate, then great - you could give thousands and it would be like one of us dropping a tenner. Why ask your colleagues, who are on average considerably less well off, to give so you can further feed your ego?

AIBU to think most charity sponsorship bis bullshit?

I have a family member who has done this all her life. My childhood was full of fundraising events for her adventures. She became a doctor who goes off "to Africa" (fair enough more useful than building a wall) but has missed lots of the boring, caring family stuff at home while everyone else thinks the sun shines out of her saintly arse. Now she is back but the sponsorship /support requests continue. I just can't see past the selfishness of how her 'giving' all has to have a fanfare while (as others upthread have said) others give of their time and help every day and she is a Scrooge with both. I'll never forget visiting a family member in hospital only to have to sit listening to them for the whole visit go on about her latest exotic adventure / foreign posting and how wonderful she is. (Ooh that feels better!)

It just seems so God damn worthy and in relation to charity seems crass. "Look at these blisters on my feet that I achieved by needlessly walking around the place in an act of faux suffering while raising money for actual starving kids". I mean, please.

My son came home from school with one of those “build a school in Africa” opportunities.
I told him what’s been said on this thread: that if he wanted this as his holiday he could get a job.
Can I mention also that any long haul flight is bad for carbon emissions?

I agree completely , the only person I ever sponsor in the London marathon loves is addicted to running and donates a lump sum more than double the standard London entry fee to the charity she is running for as the first entry on her Just Giving page. She does rather well in terms of sponsorship, I suspect because we feel we are not funding her run.

This has literally just happened in my office, and I thought CFers!

DS of colleague has decided not to take his place at Uni this year, and has applied to do a charity thing in African country. Cue much handwringing from his DM, wondering if he will be accepted after a gruelling interview process. Surprise! He made it through, and apparently the charity are totally legit, all government backed etc etc. His DM is “so proud”.

Next day colleague sends link to sons justgiving page. His first “challenge” is to raise £1000. He’s not actually doing anything for the money, just telling his story and simply asking for the money! I was stunned, and chose not to donate to fund his gap year “holiday”.

And now I’ve come on here and see that I’m not the only one thinking these miserly thoughts.

Totally agree with you OP. I like to swim, so I join events, I pay the entry fee / charity fee and crack on with it.

I'm not sponsoring someone to climb Killy or do Marathon des sables when they are doing it for their own fitness objectives.

I give to the charities I want to.

@Ariela the charities have to pay way more than the standard entry for a London place - between £300-£900 depending on the charity. I never sponsor anyone for the London marathon unless they get a ballot place or GFA. If they did contribute £500+ themselves on their fundraising page I would too but never seen that.

I don't know how the London marathon gets away with it. Saying that, I'd love to run it and looking forward to the ballot result!

I did volunteer for a charity that specialised in women in business. I am a banker and my speciality was how to win investment - my ‘clients’ were often small one woman bands, uneducated, who were trying to get backers for various business ventures across Asia. I helped them to write business plans, put them in touch with online accountancy software companies for free accounts, and local companies looking to invest and basically helped at least 3 of these women to set up what are now decent sized SMEs. Not all charities are rubbish.

My dh does the London Marathon most years. His work get given a certain amount of places by the charity that his company is supporting (it changes annually). Dh still has to pay the charity entrance fee, about £600 I think, then his work double it. But it means he definitely gets a place and doesn’t feel like he’s training for nothing. It would be a complete piss take if he asked people to sponsor him to do this.

teddybear I don’t think anyone is saying that charities are rubbish

Totally agree! We enjoy hiking and running so wouldn't ask for sponsorship to enable us to enjoy our hobbies and holidays. If I did something I was terrified of for charity (like skydiving or bungee jumping) I'd ask for sponsorship, as I'd be putting myself through an ordeal I didn't want to do to raise funds/awareness, but would never ask for sponsorship for running, which is what I pay to do anyway.

I was once contacted by a new acquaintance/merging into friend territory who sought money for the CEO sleep out.

He was a Director of his own (quite wealthy and well connected) company.

Basically, they get a bunch of well known CEO’s/Directors together, put them in a safe warehouse somewhere at night - these guys come rugged up in the latest snow/camping gear and fluffy down sleeping bags.

Basically they network with each other while a bunch of security guards (earning minimum wage) watch over them all night.

It’s safe, it’s clean, it’s dry. And at the end of it they go home to their million dollar homes.

Meanwhile, these CEO’s get all this press about how selfless they are and how much they raised for “charity”.

At the time he was pushing quite aggressively that I give him money for the homeless and here I was homeless myself; having recently had to leave where I was living to move in with my sister while I was battling multiple medical conditions and trying to pay off medical debt all the while only working part-time.

I had a job, one that was considered well connected, but many women don’t have stable accommodation, still work and meet the definition of “homeless”.

All of my stuff was in storage, my clothes and other worldly possessions were packed up in my car (which I used to drive to work every day). I had the bare essentials in my sisters house. If I needed a pair of shoes or a jumper, I got it from the trunk of my car.

It wasn’t a stable arrangement at all, I was abused while I was there and in and out of hospital. I worried that my things would get stolen and I had a tremendous shame over my predicament.

Mine wasn’t the worst case scenario - I wasn’t on the streets, but I wasn’t eating or sleeping properly while I was there and it was incredibly stressful being threatened with eviction whenever I disagreed with my sister.

I wanted to give money to help the homeless, but I know that money would just be used as a PR exercise that was the CEO sleepout.

My acquaintance made out like I was some massive asshole for not giving hundreds of dollars. He told me it was for single mothers (I was also hiding a pregnancy at the time) and when that failed, he told me it was for cats. He put it on pretty thick to get me to donate.

It really pissed me off being asked for money I didn’t have to support some rich guy look good amongst his equally rich peers.

If you look around my city there are a lot of homeless people and an absence of services. The CEO sleepout is just a feel-good exercise for rich men.

So yeah, it bothers me when rich people ask for money. I find it vulgar.

@tinselvestsparklepants

My cousin raised money for her holiday to walk one or the 7 wonders of the world (I won’t say which one). That was it basically. She said she was raising money for an auto-immune disease but it was really just to get herself to an overseas country for a free holiday.

She also has a job in a medical discipline 🤔

I find that those sorts of people don’t just solicit money once in their lives - it’s a habit.

She also gets her hobby sponsored 🤣

Proper sponsored, so her flights are paid for to travel to play this BS hobby that most people have never even heard of!!

Thank you so much for this thread!!

I’m so glad that others think the same thing as I do - it seems that no one calls out this behaviour though.

Oh, it's for awareness?

Let's all think back to the last thing we were asked to sponsor. Can you remember the name of the charity and its aims? I'm 80% sure mine was some kind of cancer charity but no idea which one, which type of cancer, or whether it was research or a hospice or something else. Lots of awareness raised there.

Our local Waitrose has in its 3 charities a group of teens who were fundraising for the local hospice so of course people just glanced, saw the hospice name and dropped a token in. Except the teens were fundraising to go abroad to fundraise! How much did the hospice see of that money, why couldn’t it of gone direct!

Mecca that sleepout sounds insane! I thought the sleep outs I had seen were bad enough but at least the people were actually sleeping out and cold. I don’t see why not everyone sees that sleeping out for one night knowing you can go home, have a nice bath, order a take away and sleep in your comfy bed the next night feels different to being homeless!

OP I am doing a charity walk and I completely agree. I am doing it for my own fun. Although I guess if you do something to raise the funds such as a cake sale or whatever then it is not as bad. At least you are putting your own sweat into it and provide a service and raise awareness.

I found my community on this thread

Our company is constantly asked to donate our products for charity auctions. We stopped this by nominating a small number of charities we support, donating directly, cutting out the glory-seeking middleman. We did this partially because we are part of a scene where there are constantly fundraisers for certain members who had some ‘hardship’ or other. In reality, it tends to be a bit of a popularity contest because it would only be done for self-styled Queen Bees in that scene and be rather selective, than ‘means-tested’. I don’t want to donate to someone who got laid off work, after one too many absences and who spunked away their disposable income on clothes and collectors’ cars. One scrounging appeal was for a vet bill, which would normally tug my heart strings but the owner made zero effort to actually curb their excessive spending and had several lavish trips planned. The only time, I did ask people to donate to a charity was when a parent died who was devoted to animals. We got the absolute cheapest coffin, super cheap urn, cheapest funeral service and asked those that intended to get flowers to give the amount directly to a specific animal charity. All the money we saved on the service went to that charity. It made us all feel better. However, we were conscious to not pressure anyone and there was no list of donations. It was left as a private choice for everyone.

I have sponsored a few people lately, but I know that the causes have been very close to their hearts. One lady whose daughters have had severe mental health problems has raise £££ for MIND. She and a friend walked around Anglesey in the summer. I know for a fact that the donations didn't cover their expenses. Another is for the friend of DD's whose sister is fighting leukaemia. This friend is cycling several miles a day to raise money for her cause.

My workplace always sponsors a charity, and we have been asked for ways how to fundraise. I'm afraid I rained on the parade of one of my colleagues suggestions which involved our team doing fun stuff. I just said that I wouldn't feel that I could ask for sponsorship to do a treasure hunt/go karting/zorbing etc no matter how good the cause.

I think that asking for sponsorship where you do something constructive for the charity is a much better idea because the charity benefits twofold. So giving up your time to volunteer/knit baby clothes/litter pick etc is less sexy but something that I would feel happy to sponsor

From the other side, our charity wouldn't be able to exist without the amazing fundraisers doing sponsored things. What would you suggest as an alternative?

We organise abseils, parachute jumps, fun runs and each raises thousands of pounds in a weekend that we'd not get otherwise.

If they hate it so much, there are plenty of other ways to raise money. I'm assuming no one made them do it.

If people really want to raise money for a charity, surely the best thing they could do is get another job and donate all their wages. It wouldn't take more hours than training for a marathon/mountain climb. That wouldn't be as much fun though.

a daughter of my mum’s friend wanted to go on a volunteering trip to africa after she’d finished college, so her mum decided to start harassing her friends into donating money to her daughter’s ‘cause.’ they made a facebook page and a just giving page that they constantly shared, with lots of photos of the poor disadvantaged children that she would be going to ‘help.’ her mum somehow talked the landlord of the local pub into hosting a fundraising night - which about ten people turned up to, all of whom were the mum’s close friends. after ranting about the unfairness of the situation on facebook, and the constant begging to friends to donate their time and skills to a raffle, she ended up distanced from a lot of her friends and she ultimately ended up funding her daughter’s trip herself - which she came home early from because she didn’t like it 🤷‍♀️

Just tell people how you'd use the money if they gave you some and then if they think it makes sense and they have the resources, they'll stick their hand in their pocket.

@SmuggleStudies

YANBU.

@SmuggleStudies

OMG I am so glad to see this thread!

I also get sick of this. People thinking others should fund their trip to Peru, South Africa, or Nepal. No just bore off.

What also annoys me is the school kids at the end of the moving belt on the checkout in Morrisons or Sainsburys, (who are often with one of their parents,) who offer to pack your shopping, and expect a donation chucking into their collection bucket..., Either for their ice hockey team to go to Canada for a match there with the Vancouver Canucks, or to fund their walk along the great wall of China!

No I am NOT funding your teenage son or daughter's holiday to Canada or China. Fuck off.